Search Results (643)

Against a backdrop of tightening environmental regulations and escalating climate-related risks, the construction sector faces mounting pressure to improve both its sustainability performance and long-term resilience. As a market-oriented institutional tool, green finance policy has been widely identified as a pivotal lever for advancing corporate green innovation; nevertheless, its causal impact on green innovation in construction enterprises—an essential foundation for sustained industry resilience—has Iyet to be fully examined in empirical research. Capitalizing on the exogenous variation introduced by China’s Green Finance Reform and Innovation Pilot Zone (GFRIPZ) initiative, this study investigates 105 construction enterprises listed on the Chinese stock market from 2010 to 2020. Employing a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) estimation strategy, we find that the GFRIPZ initiative significantly boosts green innovation among construction enterprises. This positive association persists after a series of robustness assessments. Channel analysis identifies financing conditions as a key pathway linking the GFRIPZ initiative to green innovation. Reduced financing frictions allow construction enterprises to increase investment in environmentally oriented technological activities. Additional sub-sample analysis corroborates that the GFRIPZ policy exerts a far more salient innovation incentive effect on non-state-owned construction firms, which aligns with the stronger impetus for in-house R&D under competitive market conditions. These findings offer empirical evidence that well-designed green finance policies can serve as effective institutional enablers of green innovation, thereby contributing to the sustainable resilience of the construction sector. The findings offer actionable guidance for regulators on incorporating financial instruments into governance frameworks that support sustainable construction. Full article

As cities assume growing responsibility for climate mitigation, an important question is whether urban carbon markets can serve as effective instruments of decarbonisation. While emissions trading research has focused primarily on emissions outcomes, less attention has been paid to the institutional mechanisms underlying policy operation. This article addresses this gap through a qualitative case study of the Tokyo Cap-and-Trade System (TCTS), launched in 2010 as the world’s first mandatory city-level emissions trading scheme. Despite its official designation, the TCTS largely follows the logic of a baseline-and-credit system rather than a conventional allowance-based cap-and-trade programme. Drawing on government data, policy documents, academic studies, and interviews, the article examines how emissions trading was adapted to the metropolitan scale through policy mobility, institutional translation, and functional state rescaling. It argues that the TCTS combines carbon trading with bureaucratic oversight, monitoring and verification, technical guidance, and energy-efficiency regulation within an administratively embedded governance framework. Although substantial emissions reductions were recorded among regulated facilities, persistent surplus credits and limited trading reveal the limits of market mechanisms alone. The study shows how globally mobile climate policies are reconfigured through local institutions and metropolitan governance capacities, suggesting that successful urban decarbonisation depends as much on administrative capacity, institutional learning, and sustained regulatory engagement as on carbon pricing. Full article

Against the backdrop of the global low-carbon transition and the rapid expansion of sustainable finance, green bonds have become an important capital-market instrument for financing environmentally beneficial projects and supporting corporate green transformation. Our research is based on panel data from A-share-listed companies in China between 2013 and 2023, employing a multi-time point Difference-in-Differences (DID) model and a DID model extended with the Dual Machine Learning (DML) estimation method for empirical testing. It further examines potential transmission channels and firm-level heterogeneity. The results show a robust positive association between green bond financing and corporate green technology efficiency. Green bond financing is also associated with weaker financing constraints and more green patent applications. These findings provide firm-level evidence for improving the effectiveness of green bond financing in facilitating corporate green transformation. Full article

Although stablecoins occupy a segment of digital-asset markets in which price stability is central by design, their temporary departures from reference values may reveal important information about latent risk and market stress. In this paper, we examine whether bubble and crash signals extracted from traditional cryptocurrencies and stablecoins improve volatility, Value-at-Risk, and Expected Shortfall forecasting and, in connection with these forecasting gains, contribute to the assessment of cross-asset contagions. The analysis applies the Bubble Crash–GARCH models, in which extreme price phases are identified through the Phillips, Shi, and Yu real-time monitoring procedure and incorporated into the conditional mean of returns through event-based dummy variables. For stablecoins, extreme episodes are not inferred from price dynamics in isolation but from deviations between the observed price and the asset-specific reference value. The empirical investigation focuses on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether’s USD-pegged (USDT), and Tether Gold and evaluates asset-specific bubble–crash effects and bidirectional contagion channels between traditional cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, using Bitcoin and Tether as the leading representatives of the two market segments. The findings indicate that accounting for bubble and crash episodes leads to more accurate volatility forecasts than standard GARCH benchmarks. For Value-at-Risk and Expected Shortfall, the bubble–crash specifications can improve tail risk forecasting at several tail probability levels through more accurate coverage, lower quantile loss, and stronger ESR backtesting performance. The results also reveal different degrees of price exuberance across the two asset categories: while extreme price dynamics are more evident among traditional cryptocurrencies, deviations from fundamentals are rare for stablecoins. Among stablecoins, USDT exhibits limited but detectable exuberance, whereas Tether Gold does not display extreme price episodes. However, when such deviations occur, as in the case of USDT, they generate significant contagion effects on major cryptocurrencies. Notably, extreme episodes originating in USDT have a stronger impacts on Bitcoin and Ethereum than the reverse spillovers from traditional cryptocurrencies to USDT. Overall, the evidence suggests that stablecoins are not merely passive instruments within the digital-asset ecosystem. Even temporary deviations from their reference values contain valuable information for risk forecasting and contagion monitoring. Full article

The successful implementation of Brazil’s National Solid Waste Plan depends on identifying municipal solid waste management strategies that are both environmentally effective and fiscally realistic for replication at scale. This study develops and tests a multidimensional framework that evaluates the performance of Brazilian municipalities across five indicators: environmental recovery quality (Y1), social coverage (Y2), economic cost efficiency (Y3), and two cost-composite indicators (Y4, Y5). The framework is grounded in the recognition that municipal solid waste management involves significant market failures—natural monopoly conditions on the supply side, and negative externalities from improper disposal alongside positive externalities from material recovery—which make single-dimension cost minimization an insufficient performance criterion. Using multivariate regression analysis on a sample of 394 municipalities drawn from the National Sanitation Information System, the study identifies factors associated with performance across all five dimensions and finds that cross-indicator sign reversals are consistent with the presence of misaligned incentives: logistical decisions and contractual structures that appear efficient at the service level generate costs in the recovery chain that are not internalized by operators. Municipalities were stratified into five recovery bands (A–E); those in Bands B–D perform significantly above the national average in material recovery while achieving cost–benefit indicators realistic enough for broader replication, making them the most strategically relevant reference group for national policy learning. The findings suggest that performance improvements are more strongly associated with the quality and targeting of expenditure than with aggregate spending levels, and that incentive-aligned contracts, quality-preserving logistics, and structured inclusion of organized waste pickers represent complementary instruments for internalizing the social value of material recovery. These results offer a foundation for evidence-based policy design under the National Solid Waste Policy frameworks. Full article

This study examines the effects of the Market Stability Reserve (MSR) policy on carbon emission prices within the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), focusing on both price levels and volatility. Employing the Synthetic Control Method (SCM), the analysis constructs a counterfactual scenario using data from Korea, New Zealand, and China—countries that have not adopted the MSR. The validity of this donor pool is verified through cointegration tests and a Vector Error Correction Model, which confirm both long-run equilibrium relationships and short-run causal interactions with the EU ETS. The empirical analysis reveals that all four MSR implementations between 2020 and 2023 significantly increased the average price of EU allowances, thereby validating the policy’s effectiveness in addressing oversupply. Additionally, MSR2 (2021) and MSR3 (2022) are found to have significantly reduced price volatility, indicating the MSR’s partial success in stabilizing market expectations. Robustness checks, including placebo tests, support the credibility of the estimated effects. The findings affirm the MSR’s role as an effective market-based instrument for enhancing price stability, sustaining investment incentives in emissions reduction, and ensuring the long-term credibility of the EU ETS. Full article

Rare earths are a strategically vital mineral resource on a global scale; the security of their supply chain and their recycling face severe challenges amid dual pressures of resource scarcity and environmental protection. This study focuses on the reverse supply chain for rare earth permanent magnet materials—specifically those based on praseodymium and neodymium—constructing a two-level game model comprising a rare earth oligopoly (Stackelberg leader) and two recyclers (Cournot followers). It systematically analyzes the dual decision-making behavior of recyclers between “recycling and selling” and “in-house remanufacturing”, and examines the impact of two policy instruments—government subsidies and environmental taxes—on the supply chain equilibrium. The study employs reverse induction to solve the game equilibrium and combines this with numerical simulation methods to compare the differing effects of the two policies on key indicators such as product output, market share, profit distribution, waste recovery volume, and recycling rates. The results indicate that there is strategic coordination and resource competition in recyclers’ decisions regarding recycling and remanufacturing, causing them to assume dual roles as both “suppliers” and “competitors” within the supply chain. Subsidy policies significantly incentivize recycling and remanufacturing activities, thereby increasing the recycling rate, but exert a slight squeeze on the profits of rare earth conglomerates. Environmental tax policies effectively curb primary mining and promote resource circulation, but may have a negative impact on the remanufacturing industry. Currently, value within the closed-loop rare earth supply chain is highly concentrated among upstream oligopolistic enterprises, whilst the recycling segment suffers from insufficient economic incentives and significant policy dependency. This study provides theoretical support and decision-making references for the government to optimize policy combinations and promote the high-quality development of the rare earth recycling industry. Full article

Agricultural modernization in China requires reconciling productivity growth with environmental sustainability, but it remains uncertain whether market-based quality institutions can also support this environmental agenda. This study examines whether and how Geographical Indication (GI) certification—a market-based quality institution primarily designed to protect product quality—affects Agricultural Green Total Factor Productivity (AGTFP), by assessing its direct effect, its interaction with agricultural industrial agglomeration, and the regional development conditions under which this effect materializes. Based on panel data from 31 Chinese provinces from 2012 to 2023, this study employs a two-way fixed-effects model to estimate the baseline effect, a moderating-effect model to examine the role of agricultural industrial agglomeration, and a panel threshold regression model to capture potential non-linearities. Results show that: (1) GI certification significantly increases AGTFP, raising it by approximately 0.001 units per certification at the 1% significance level, a result that remains robust to instrumental variable estimation; (2) agricultural industrial agglomeration positively moderates this relationship, with GI certification’s effect significant only in high-agglomeration regions; and (3) the effect of GI certification follows a threshold-dependent pattern, turning from a significant negative effect of 0.0023 below an agricultural development level of 0.048 to a significant positive effect of 0.0015 above it. This study offers the first systematic evidence on the green institutional efficacy of GI certification and its boundary conditions. Consequently, agricultural policy should shift its focus from simply issuing certifications to maintaining ongoing performance oversight, with strategies tailored to regional industrial agglomeration and levels of economic development. Full article

Environmental regulation is widely regarded as an institutional driver of corporate green transformation, yet how it operates on firms and for whom remains unsettled. Treating the 2015 entry into force of China’s revised Environmental Protection Law as a quasi-natural experiment, this study estimates a difference-in-differences (DID) model on 38,910 firm-year observations covering 4447 Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share firms over 2010–2024. Corporate green transformation is measured along three dimensions—the length-normalized intensity of green-transformation language in annual reports, green patent output, and green total factor productivity—and combined into a composite index. The regulation raises green-transformation intensity by 0.156 (about 14.8% of the sample mean) and green total factor productivity by 0.0021; pre-reform event-study coefficients are jointly insignificant, no randomized placebo reaches the observed estimate, and the result survives propensity-score matching and province-by-year fixed effects. It is accompanied by falling greenwashing and rising disclosure specificity, indicating that the additional green language is not merely talk. Bootstrap mediation tests support transmission through executive green cognition and through green exploratory, but not exploitative, innovation. Contrary to the received view, the law did not loosen financing constraints; instead, pre-reform financial capacity bounds the response, and firms that were more constrained respond substantially less. Effects are larger for digitally capable, better-governed firms and in more marketized regions, and command-and-control instruments outperform market-based pilots over this window. Full article

Agricultural subsidy policies have increasingly shifted from production-oriented support toward incentives that reward environmental stewardship and the provision of ecosystem services. Despite their rapid expansion, evidence regarding the environmental effectiveness, economic efficiency, market implications, and food-security consequences of these eco-centric agricultural subsidies remains fragmented across policy frameworks and regions. This review synthesizes current evidence on eco-centric agricultural subsidies by comparatively evaluating their environmental, economic, and policy outcomes across developed and developing economies. The review was conducted using a structured literature search following PRISMA-informed review procedures, drawing upon peer-reviewed articles, systematic reviews, policy evaluations, and international institutional reports retrieved from major scientific databases and policy sources. The evidence indicates that eco-centric subsidies generally improve biodiversity conservation, soil health, carbon sequestration, water quality, and reductions in chemical inputs when payments are appropriately targeted and supported by effective monitoring and institutional capacity. Performance-based and results-oriented payment schemes frequently demonstrate greater environmental additionality and cost-effectiveness than conventional practice-based payments; however, their broader implementation remains constrained by monitoring costs, verification requirements, administrative complexity, and regional institutional capacity. Economic outcomes are more heterogeneous, with benefits depending on program design, agroecological conditions, market structures, and farm characteristics. While these subsidies can enhance environmental returns on public investment, challenges including land-value capitalization, unequal benefit distribution, transaction costs, market distortions, and potential short-term productivity trade-offs remain important policy concerns. Evidence regarding food-security impacts is similarly context-dependent and varies across production systems and geographical regions. Overall, the review demonstrates that no single subsidy instrument is universally effective. Instead, the greatest environmental and economic benefits are achieved through integrated policy portfolios combining targeted incentives, outcome-based payments, robust monitoring systems, digital technologies, carbon-market integration, and equitable program design. The review also identifies important evidence gaps concerning developing-country experiences, long-term cost-effectiveness, and standardized evaluation frameworks, providing priorities for future research and policy development. Full article

Land-use conflicts in non-urbanized areas are fundamentally governance problems rather than purely environmental ones: sustainability outcomes increasingly depend on integrated, cross-sectoral decision-making reconciling forestry, agriculture, tourism, infrastructure, and urbanization within a finite land resource. This study examines whether statutory land acquisitions by a public forest administration can be understood as such a governance instrument rather than simply forest-area expansion, using an original transaction-level database of 911 land purchases by the Polish State Forests (Lasy Panstwowe) through statutory pre-emption rights between 2022 and mid-2026. The database covers 2806.1 hectares and, for the 903 transactions with a determinable price, approximately 114.2 million PLN. Using descriptive statistics, concentration indices (Gini, Herfindahl–Hirschman), an exploratory hedonic-style log–log regression of unit price on parcel area with location and year fixed effects, and a spatial-autocorrelation analysis (Moran’s I), the study examines spatial concentration, price differentiation, and parcel-size effects. Results show pronounced sub-regional concentration (county-level Gini = 0.615, more than double the voivodeship-level value of 0.284), a systematic price premium for parcels below 0.5 ha, and a dominant role of location over parcel size in explaining price variation (R-squared rising from 0.042 to 0.198 with location fixed effects); these are descriptive associations rather than causal estimates, given the absence of parcel-level quality covariates and a fully specified spatial–econometric model. The findings support interpreting statutory pre-emption purchases as a market-based institutional mechanism contributing to boundary rationalization, ownership consolidation, and mediation of competing land-use pressures, with implications for county-level monitoring and cross-sectoral coordination with spatial planning. Full article

The main objective of this study is to assess the level of sustainable supply chain management implementation in enterprises offering homogenized food products and dietary foods in the Polish FMCG market, as well as to evaluate their strategic orientation toward sustainability, with particular emphasis on the extent of implementation of sustainable transportation and distribution-related logistics practices. The study employed a quantitative research design based on a census survey of all enterprises operating in this market segment in Poland (84 firms classified under PKD 10.86.Z). After data verification, 80 valid questionnaires were included in the analysis, representing an effective response rate of 95.24%. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire comprising 17 items organized into two dimensions: strategic sustainability orientation and sustainable logistics practices. Responses were measured on a seven-point Likert scale. The research instrument was refined through expert evaluation and pilot tested, and demonstrated satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.74). The empirical data were analyzed using the Development Index calculated with the gradient method, which measures deviations from an ideal reference value and enables quantitative assessment of the maturity of sustainable supply chain management practices. The findings indicate that the implementation of SSCM among the surveyed enterprises remains selective rather than comprehensive. Companies demonstrate relatively strong performance in employee-related social practices, digital supply chain transparency, and delivery route optimization. In contrast, environmental initiatives, particularly the adoption of low-emission transportation solutions, replacement of environmentally harmful transport assets, and broader integration of environmental and economic objectives, remain insufficiently developed. The study highlights the need for a more balanced integration of the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability within supply chain management. The results provide practical guidance for enterprises seeking to improve the sustainability of their logistics operations while strengthening long-term competitiveness and creating value for stakeholders. Full article

Market-based instruments for environmental governance have emerged as a central pillar of China’s climate policy architecture, though their capacity to drive corporate green innovation continues to be the subject of active scholarly debate. Drawing on a staggered difference-in-differences identification strategy and a panel of Chinese A-share listed firms covering 2008 to 2023, this study evaluates the impact of China’s carbon emission trading scheme (CETS) pilot policy on firm-level green innovation. Our estimates indicate that the CETS pilot policy significantly increases green patent applications, a finding that proves robust for an extensive set of checks: parallel trends assessment, placebo exercises, PSM-DID estimation, alternative estimation strategies, and varied sample constructions. Heterogeneity analyses show that the innovation-enhancing effect is concentrated among firms operating in non-regulated industries and located in the western region, and that enterprises and regions endowed with stronger baseline carbon performance and higher pollution control investment display amplified responses. Mechanism analysis shows that the CETS pilot policy increases both operating costs and debt financing costs, yet these two cost channels exert opposite effects on green innovation. Operating costs drive innovation through cost-induced pressure, while financing costs inhibit innovation through a crowding-out effect. The net-positive effect suggests that the innovation-inducing effect of operating costs outweighs the innovation-inhibiting effect of financing costs. This study recommends maintaining stable carbon price signals, implementing complementary green finance policies, providing differentiated support for low-capability firms and regions, and accounting for spillover effects in policy evaluation. Full article

Climate-related disturbances are increasingly identified as major determinants of food insecurity in fragile environments, yet empirical evidence remains scarce in conflict-affected areas such as the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Using high-frequency FAO DIEM-Monitoring surveys (2022–2026), this paper estimates the causal effect of climate shocks on household food security in the provinces of Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, and Tanganyika. Food security is measured with five validated indicators (FCS, HDDS, HHS, FIES, and rCSI); capturing multiple dimensions of access, consumption, and coping. To address endogeneity in self-reported shock exposure, the authors apply an instrumental-variable Conditional Mixed Process (IV-CMP) model and triangulate results with a pseudo-panel fixed-effects ordered probit model based on FIES severity. Objective climate proxies (rainfall and NDVI) are used to reinforce robustness. The results indicate that climate shocks lead to a significant deterioration in food consumption and raise the likelihood of households experiencing both moderate and severe food insecurity, thereby undermining sustainable food security. Effects are heterogeneous across provinces, reflecting the interaction between climate variability, conflict intensity, and market access constraints. Female-headed households are disproportionately affected in some areas, highlighting gendered vulnerabilities, while income, education, livestock ownership, and land access mitigate vulnerability. These findings highlight the need for integrated and sustainability-oriented policy responses combining climate-smart agriculture, adaptive social protection, early warning systems, and conflict-sensitive programming. Overall, this research advances existing knowledge by delivering rigorous causal insights based on multiple food security indicators and advanced econometric techniques in a highly fragile setting. Full article

We examine how institutional quality conditions the labor market returns to educational attainment, using individual-level microdata from the fourth round of the Life in Transition Survey across thirteen European Union member states. Linear probability models with country fixed effects show a tertiary employment premium of 12.4 percentage points. Contrary to our initial hypothesis, this premium is larger where institutional trust is lower: a one-point increase on the five-point trust index reduces the premium by 2.6 percentage points, consistent with formal credentials partly substituting for trust-based hiring mechanisms where perceived governance quality is weaker. Two-stage least squares estimates instrumenting tertiary attainment with parental education and childhood book ownership corroborate the baseline gradient, though we interpret them as supportive rather than definitive causal evidence. Tertiary-educated migrants face employment penalties of 4 to 12 percentage points relative to observably similar non-migrants, and 23.8 percent of employed respondents are over-qualified, with the highest incidence in the Baltic states. The findings suggest that educational expansion without parallel investment in credential recognition and institutional upgrading may generate systematic human capital misallocation. Full article